


Once Upon a Time

by sapphose



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Character Study, Fairy Tales, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27712154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphose/pseuds/sapphose
Summary: Garak relates more to human fairy tales than he would care to admit.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 22
Kudos: 68





	Once Upon a Time

**Author's Note:**

> I have a day off from work, got a good night's sleep for the first time in weeks, and this is the result. It came initially from thinking about Mila, but then I thought of the Bluebeard connection and the other pieces clicked. I wasn't sure how to end it, but I do think that Julian's actions in "The Wire" would be a little fairy tale to Garak. (Although I tried to weave in references to other episodes as well)

There’s an old human story called Bluebeard, where a young woman marries a nobleman and is able to go anywhere in the house she likes, as long as she does not ask questions or pry into his secrets.

Perhaps it was something like that, when Mila came to work for Enabran Tain. More luxury than she had ever known before, but more danger as well.

In the story, the young woman opens a door she shouldn’t and nearly gets herself killed. Humans are stupid that way.

Mila, against all odds, managed to survive Tain. There is something to be said for respecting secrets.

There is a fairy tale called Beauty and the Beast, where a young person is determined to do her duty to her father, even if it puts her in terrible danger. She goes to live with a monster, who wants to possess her entirely, and she feels utterly alone, in exile from her home. In the confines of the castle, she can have anything she wants, but she cannot leave.

Eventually, desperate to see the family she left behind, she succeeds in begging the Beast’s permission to visit her old home. But home is not what she remembered, and even in her father’s good graces something is missing.

Her return to her father, she realizes, will kill the Beast that she has come to love.

She saves him from dying in the last moment, as they always do in these stories. Garak wonders if she kills her father in doing so.

The story could also be told as, once there was a monster, who loved a very beautiful young person who would never love him back. It might be a good story, if not for the happily ever after, and the fact that the monster does not do his duty to anyone.

Perhaps that is part of what makes him a monster.

Julian says that Cinderella is about love and the rewarding of virtue. Garak liked it more than he expected to, when he thought it was about a child doing her duty to her father’s legacy, even though she had to ignore her own desires to do so.

He likes it a good deal less when she decides that her penance doesn’t serve her dead father at all, and goes off to marry a prince.

She lives happily ever after. They always do, in these sorts of stories.

There are stories about brave young knights who go into dragon lairs to save their loves. Of course, the love in question is always female, and never the child of the dragon being faced. Humans don’t seem to enjoy such complications.

Garak does not believe in happily ever afters. Surviving takes too much work. But this is the closest to a fairy tale that he has ever come, and when he looks back on it, he savors the moment.

**Author's Note:**

> If you use tumblr, you can find me there as sapphoswrites. I mostly reblog other people's things (about Star Trek), but I occasionally post little writing pieces, like [this one](https://sapphosewrites.tumblr.com/post/635691584573308928/the-time-it-takes-to-fall-in-love-a-garashir)


End file.
